Mystery Man (8 page)

As I waited for a response to my enquiries, I armed myself with a Crunchie and my binoculars and settled down for a relaxing afternoon watching both the jewellery store and life in general out on Botanic Avenue. I had my notebook open beside me to jot down the licence plates of the cars parked immediately outside the shop, and for a hundred yards on either side. I have always done this. Not always, but since I was twelve and had measles and there were no books in the house because my father was a Free Presbyterian and objected to the rude words and verbs, and I had to find something to do with my time. I compiled many volumes full of car registrations, and spent hours looking for patterns in them. I still do it. I have not yet discovered any patterns, but I believe that my chances of ever finding them have been corrupted by personalised number plates, for which I have developed a pathological hatred. I routinely scratch the paintwork of cars that have personalised number plates using a nail I purchased specifically for this purpose. It is difficult to purchase just one nail, and the man in the hardware store took an age and a half to come up with a price for it; he kept trying to give me more nails for the same amount of money, but I wouldn't have them. They're dangerous. If the police were to take possession of my car-scratching nail and analyse it they would find microscopic shavings of the paint of a thousand cars, and arrest me and put me in prison. This is one reason I don't like dealing with the police, in case they discover my nail. I keep it hidden in the fridge in the small kitchen at the back of the store. When I go out shopping I take the nail from the fridge in case I find any personalised number plates. I still routinely memorise ordinary number plates and then write them down when I get back to work. However, on this occasion, I rather hurried getting the numbers down, as I had spotted that Alison was just returning to work. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I think that that is only true in certain cases. I would defy anyone to look at the photograph of Rosemary Trevor and say that she wasn't beautiful. But out of any dozen men surveyed, perhaps only two or three would say that Alison fell into the same category. That was good for me, because I don't do well in a competitive market. I cannot imagine anyone being my sun and stars, my earth and moon, if there's even a vague possibility that someone else is going to come along and steal her away. I thanked God that she had immediately seen through Brendan's floppy hair and surgically enhanced smile. I could only keep my fingers crossed that there was nobody else in her life. I fervently hoped that her domestic arrangements were as sad as my own, that she had only known disappointment and rejection in her relationships; that she had been through her period of only liking attractive men, that she had relaxed her standards sufficiently to consider borderline personality disorders and romantic attachments that were just a few degrees south of stalking.

I am quite self-aware.

There is no sugar on my almonds.

Alison did not once glance across the road towards me. I didn't consider that to be indicative of anything. Yes, she had stormed out of my store, but it had not been my fault. And comparing what I knew about her at the start of the day – little to nothing – with what I now knew, I could not help but consider my current position to be beyond my wildest possible dreams. I had admired her from afar for such a long time. (Well, not always
afar,
as on several occasions I had actually gotten quite close to her while I followed her shopping.) But now I not only knew her Christian name – Alison, meaning 'little Alice', with Alice meaning 'of a noble kin'; a princess, undoubtedly – but also that her first love wasn't the jewellery store. She was an artist who struggled with writing. I had grown up on comics, and although I didn't stock them in the store, I had maintained a passing interest, which I was now more than prepared to fan back into life if it meant us having something in common. I Googled
Alison
and
comics
in the hope that I might suddenly be inundated with thousands of leads to further information about her, but all I got in return was a moment of stark terror – the only working comic-book artist with that first name was a lesbian called Alison Bechdel who was famous (in certain circles) for a strip called 'Dykes to Watch Out For'. However, further investigation showed that she'd been drawing 'Dykes' since 1983, which surely ruled my Alison out on age grounds, and that she was in fact American. Of course it didn't mean that my Alison
wasn't
a lesbian. There was always that possibility. I had never seen a boyfriend hanging around the shop to meet her at lunchtime or after work, and when I'd sat behind her at the movies she had been by herself.
(Hellboy –
I should have picked up on the comics connection.) But I had seen no direct indication of Sapphic tendencies, and anyway, the whole phenomenon hadn't quite caught on in Belfast the way it had elsewhere. No,
my
Alison was an artist, but perhaps her comics hadn't yet been published, or she drew them purely for her own entertainment, or she worked under a pseudonym, or perhaps . . .

At that point my e-mail pinged and it was Daniel Trevor, and an attachment detailing Rosemary's appointments in Frankfurt, together with the titles and a brief description of the books she was selling there. Obviously I ignored this until after Alison left the jeweller's at five thirty. I took the precaution of lowering the binoculars as she bade farewell to her colleagues. I was not surprised when she failed to glance towards No Alibis. If she had, she would have found me studying the PC, not the slightest bit interested in her comings and goings, whereas in fact I had my webcam pointed across the road and was watching her every move on the screen before me.

After she had gone, and I had locked up the premises, I sat in the semi-darkness before my computer and finally opened Daniel's attachment. My field of expertise is books, not people – definitely not people – so the first list I studied was of the books and their brief synopses, to see if it would lead me anywhere. Everything I really needed to know was already in the titles. These were:

The Siege of Derry
– by Dr David Wilson

It Was Fine When It Left Us: the Building of the Titanic
–
 by Michael Mercer

I Came to Dance
– the Autobiography of Anne Smith

Talks about Talks: the Northern Ireland Peace Process
–
 by Andrew Capper

It was immediately clear to me that Brendan's declaration that there would be no interest abroad in local subjects was indeed blinkered. All four titles might have put
me
to sleep – but there could certainly be
some
foreign interest in them. The
Titanic
– went without saying. The siege – history and warfare, absolutely. A successful peace process, the envy of the world, a lesson in how to do it for other conflicts? Definitely. The only one I wasn't sure about was
I Came to Dance
– and that only because my knowledge of dance was so poor that I couldn't be sure that Northern Ireland had contributed anything at all to the bigger picture. But it might have.

I next turned to Rosemary's schedule, which was indeed packed. As I perused it, it quickly became clear that there was one publishing company, Bockenheimer, that had met with her every day. She had allowed exactly thirty minutes for each of her appointments, from 8.30 a.m. to 8 p.m. – except for the last two days, where it appeared that Bockenheimer had been levered in between other meetings at quite a late stage.

I glanced at my watch. It now being 7.30 p.m., and having not so much a window as an entire glasshouse in my social diary, I decided that there was nothing else for it but to phone Daniel Trevor. A gruff, somewhat slurred voice answered and promised to get him. I hung up after five minutes and rang back and this time Daniel himself answered. 'Saturday nights,' he wearily confessed, 'and the poets are on the loose.' He excused himself for a moment as he relocated to a quieter part of the house, then picked up the receiver again. 'It's a madhouse,' he said. 'Now what can I do for you?'

I plunged straight in without any niceties. Don't believe in them. 'Bockenheimer . . . four meetings in four days seems a bit excessive.'

'Manfredd!' Daniel laughed. 'Yes of course, dear Manfredd. Manfredd Freetz. He's an old friend, and one of our regular partners, we've done quite a few books with him over the years. Usually we conduct our meetings with him over a very liquid lunch, sometimes we can barely remember what we've agreed with him. Lovely man. Enjoys his beer.'

'Does four meetings not still seem a lot?'

'Oh, I don't know. She did say something about him. I think he was undecided about one of the titles – that can happen if it isn't written yet.'

'How do you mean, isn't written?'

'Well, we might be selling an outline, perhaps a couple of sample chapters – we're really selling the idea. Perhaps it will be an expensive book to print so we have to recruit some foreign publishers to help cover the costs. A co-production.'

'Which title was it?'

'Ahm – well, actually Rosemary had high hopes of selling him the
Titanic
book, and in fact he did take that, quite a healthy price too, but then he came back and expressed an interest in the dance book as well. Anne Smith's memoir. Yes, I remember now because we joked about it. Rosemary was deliberately quite vague with him about it. She gave him the outline and one of the chapters – about the later years of her career in Belfast – but she really couldn't give him anything else because the truth is the author has been quite seriously ill and hasn't been able to deliver. I think Manfredd believed Rosemary was being coy to try and ratchet up the price.'

'But coy about what? Is anyone that interested in Northern Irish dance? Even in Northern Ireland?'

'Ah – right. I see where you're at. I may have misled you a little myself by calling it "the dance book". That's what we contracted for originally. Anne Smith is the doyenne of dance in Northern Ireland, the founder of our largest – and to tell you the truth, our only – school of modern dance. For thirty years she was our principal choreographer, she produced shows, she nurtured talent, she promoted her charges to companies all over the world. Really, I can't emphasise how important she has been to dance in Northern Ireland.'

He hesitated then.

'And . . . ?'

'Well, it seems that in her youth she was also principal dancer at the Birkenau labour camp. That's Auschwitz.'

'Fuck
off
,' I responded.

Monday morning, not long after opening, waiting for Jeff to come in so that I could work some more on the now reopened and intriguing
Case of the Dancing Jews,
I was idly observing the jewellery shop when I was stunned to see Alison waving at me from behind her counter. Panicked, I immediately dropped the binoculars and followed them under the counter. When I re-emerged three minutes later, and surreptitiously glanced across, she waved again. Then she stepped outside the shop and repeated the gesture. I therefore exited my own shop, taking just a moment to run a hand through my hair, and stood on the kerb opposite her.

'Hello!' I shouted across. Traffic was heavy, and loud. I held up the binoculars. 'Just got a new pair – trying them out!'

At exactly the same time she cupped a hand to her mouth and shouted: 'I wanted to apologise about Saturday. I shouldn't have . . .'

And she made the universal sign for wanking.

'No problem!' I also made the universal sign for wanking. 'It was quite funny!'

She returned the sign again. 'I don't think yer man thought it was funny!'

'Well, he is a bit of a . . .' And I repeated the hand movement.

If a third person had been watching us from a vantage point equidistant between the two of us, and happened to be deaf, and was translating for a fourth party, he would have said that the conversation went like this:

'Wanker!'

'Wanker!'

'Wanker!'

'Wanker!'

And thought we were demented.

'Can I buy you a coffee?' Alison asked.

Result!

'Yes, please!'

She pointed along the street. There was a Starbucks about a hundred yards up. She nodded behind her, then gave me a different hand signal.
Five minutes.
She returned to her jewellery store, and I returned to my bookshop, where all the books are chosen by me and not by a committee of accountants. Jeff arrived as I was brushing my teeth.

'Look after things, I've been invited out for coffee.'

'Really? Who by?'

'Alison.'

'Alison? Who's Alison?'

'From the jewellery shop,' I beamed.

'My God, how did you manage that?'

I shrugged.

'Is she your
girlfriend
?'

'I'm just going for coffee.'

'With your
girlfriend
.'

I looked at him. 'While I'm gone, make yourself useful. I want you to Google
ballet
and
Auschwitz
together, see what you get.'

I would have done it myself the day before, but I don't work on Sundays. I promised my father. He's in heaven now, but watching.

'
Ballet
and . . . why?' Jeff asked.

'Because,' I said.

Jeff would have had a coronary if he'd known we were in Starbucks. He has marched against globalisation. I'm all for it. I'm all for uniformity of choice and familiarity. If I had my way there would be a No Alibis on every corner. I like the Starbucks menu. I start at the top and work my way through to the end. I
never
jump around. It takes me three weeks. Then I start over again. When they occasionally change their menu, it really fucks me up. Coffee is coffee to me, I don't mind what country it comes from, who picks it or under what conditions, and I really don't give a damn who serves it or what they're paid as long as they get it right. With Alison I'd gotten as far that month as a caramel frappuccino, served in a tall glass with a pink striped straw. She had a black coffee.

'I used to collect comics,' I said, 'but my dad didn't approve, so I had to keep them hidden and only read them with a torch under the bedclothes. I suppose it made it quite exciting. I had a complete run of
Sub-Mariner,
a complete
Avengers
– though only the British weekly version. My two favourite comics of all time are
Amazing Adventures 18
featuring "War of the Worlds" – you know, with Killraven, Gerry Conway wrote it, Neal Adams and Howard Chaykin drew it – and
Astonishing Tales 25
featuring the origin of "Deathlok the Demolisher". Doug Moench wrote it, Rich Buckler drew it. And anything by Jim Starlin, he's a god.'